


dancing in the dark

by azulaahai



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (yes for real), F/M, Fluff, Harry is a shithead, Modern AU, Sansa is a little down, Very much fluff, does not qualify as smut even though it may seem like it, make out sessions in closets, no fucking clue what this is, they just make out ok, this is one of those fics I'll regret and delete later hahah enjoy it while you can, throwing peanuts at eachother, weird emotional talks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 19:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16247996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azulaahai/pseuds/azulaahai
Summary: Sansa isn’t entirely sure how she ended up here.The closet is dark around her. The closet, yes - she’s in a closet, she constantly has to remind herself - a rather big one, in her defense, but a closet nevertheless. She knows that there are jackets on coat-hangers all around her if she cared to have a look around, but for now her eyes are closed and they’ve turned the light off and his lips are on hers and she’s a little distracted.* * *Running into her ex-from-hell at a party, Sansa Stark does the only rational thing: she hides in the closet. It was not really planned. Neither is the fact that someone finds her there.





	dancing in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> What is this? No clue!
> 
> Title from "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran (oh, hush). Realised this was kind of similar to an old gendrya hogwarts au of mine, "The Hiding Place", so I'm essentially plagiarising myself at this point. Yay me.
> 
> I'm lastofthegiants nowadays on tumblr, come say hi

NOW

 

Sansa isn’t entirely sure how she ended up here.

 

The closet is dark around her. The _closet_ , yes - she’s in a closet, she constantly has to remind herself - a rather big one, in her defense, but a closet nevertheless. She knows that there are jackets on coat-hangers all around her if she cared to have a look around, but for now her eyes are closed and they’ve turned the light off and his lips are on hers and she’s a little distracted.

 

* *

 

THEN

 

It began, admittedly, with a cop-out on her part. 

 

Harry and she had been broken up for a few months now. Without even being bitter Sansa could honestly say she was over it, in the sense that she would much like to pretend that their little fling (which lasted a few months, though after what she’s heard, they might not have been quite as exclusive as she’d thought they were during that time) never happened. 

 

Still, things ended so messily and embarrassingly pathetic between them, that Sansa had done everything in her power to avoid running into Harry. She’d skipped events she knew he’d attend, stopped going to the coffee shop where he was a regular (much to her sorrow - their lemon cakes were heavenly) - she’d even, though she was a little ashamed to admit it, started taking a different route when walking to work just to avoid a potential confrontation with him. Harry had lied and cheated and argued his way trough their short little almost-not-even-a-thing-but-unfortunately-a-Thing. Once, Sansa had an actual nightmare about finding him in her bedroom with another girl. (In the dream, he’d had purple hair for some reason. Sansa and Margaery had in vain tried psychoanalyze some meaning out of that.) Safe to say, it had been a bad breakup. 

 

So when she walked into the kitchen during Robb’s and his roommates’ house warming party to find herself eye to eye with none other than Harry himself, she’d done what any self-respecting, conflict-shy woman would do.

 

She’d run away and hid in the closet before he saw her.

 

To be fair, she’d not _planned_ to hide in the closet. Her intention, if a little blurry due to slight panic, had been to go to the bathroom and text Jeyne from there. But this damn apartment was bigger than it had any right to be, and _apparently_ had a walk-in-closet with a door that looked like the bathroom door, and long story short Sansa had wound up in the closet and been too chicken to get out of there.

 

* * *

 

He’d come in and interrupted her little tiny-breakdown-in-a-dark-closet-episode simply by turning on the light.

 

Jon Snow, one of Robb’s aforementioned new roommates, the quiet, brooding kid who had grown up to be that special type of raggedy handsome and had been Robb’s shadow since, it seemed, birth, and whom Sansa had a huge crush on in middle school. (At 12 years of age, she’d actually written him a love letter, inspired by a classic novel she’d read. It was never sent, thank all the gods. Arya found it a few years later and laughed so hard Sansa still hadn’t quite forgiven her.)

 

As the light came on and Jon froze as he saw her, seemingly at a loss as to what to do when finding your best friends sister in the dark in your closet, Sansa stared at him standing in the doorway for a moment. He stared back. 

  
” _Sansa_? What the h-”

 

”It’s complicated, Snow.”

 

To her surprise, he didn’t run out of the closet screaming. Instead he took a step inside, the door shutting behind him.

 

”Do you, uhm, need help or anything? Is something wrong?” His voice was light, but Sansa didn’t think she was imagining the concern in those grey eyes, and a wave of affection hit her.

 

”It’s fine, Jon. Just … my ex is out there, and I kind of, you know, fled the scene.”

 

”Harry’s here?” Jon had gone tense. ”Well, he’s got a bloody nerve! I’ll kick him out for you - ”  


”No, please”, Sansa said, mortified at the thought of the scene; her stepping out of the closet on shaky legs like Bambi and with eyes wild with terror pointing Harry out and being all ” _j’accuse!_ ” while Jon had to come to her defense because she couldn’t fight her own battles, all while her entire social circle watched the show from front row … 

 

It could hardly do any good.

 

”It’s fine!” she assured Jon almost hysterically, shooting him a smile that seemed to make him even more confused. 

 

”It’s fine?” he echoed slowly. Sansa nodded in what she hoped was an enthusiastic way. Jon did not seem convinced. ”I could …”  
  
”No! You don’t have to do anything at all!” Her voice was more high-pitched than usual. Very cartoonish. ”I texted Jeyne and she’ll be here in an hour! It’s a-okay!” Hm. A-okay. Not an expression she normally used. She blamed the pressured circumstances. To drive home her point, Sansa waved her phone in the air and Jon leaned back a bit, as if he was afraid to get hit by her phone-waving arm.

 

”So … you’ll just … stay here in the closet then? And, ehrm, wait for Jeyne?” His tone was unnecessarily skeptical, Sansa had to say.  
  
”You make it sound so sad, Jon. Don’t worry about me!” She smiled again, and put on her most independent face. ”Go enjoy your party.”

 

”You want to … stay in the closet?” he asked again, stupified.

 

”Just temporarily, Jon. I’m not moving in.”

 

A pause. 

 

”… do you need anything?” he said again. 

 

”Some snacks would be nice.”

 

”On it”, he said, already turning towards the door.

 

”Jon”, she snorted and put a hand on his arm to stop him. ”I was being sarcastic.”

 

He looked down at where she touched him, and suddenly the atmosphere in the closet seemed to shift a little, in a not entirely unpleasant way. 

 

Had she finally taken that last little step and gone completely insane, or did his eyes dart to her lips?

 

He cleared his throat and Sansa looked down at the floor.  


”I’ll get us some snacks”, he muttered, and this time she was a little too distracted to stop him before he went out of the closet.

 

* *

 

”Are you really alright?” he asked.

 

They were, naturally, still in the closet, sitting side by side with their backs against the wall, the bowl of crisps and peanuts in between them.

 

”Yes, Jon! Stop asking me that”, she said, throwing a peanut at him. He picked it up and threw it back, of course. She decided to accept his retribution and not take revenge.

 

”I’m sorry”, he said. ”But we _are_ currently hiding in a closet.”

 

”Don’t think of it as hiding. Think of it as waiting.”

 

”Sansa”, he said. He always said her name in his own little way - no one else sounded so serious saying it, like he put his heart into that one little word. _Sansa_. ”Talk to me.”

 

”I have nothing to say.”

 

”Let me help you with that. You could start with ’my ex is a dick.’”

  
”My ex is a dick. Happy?” She ate crisps, the crunchy sound spreading through the closet. She hoped it wasn’t grossing him out. 

 

For some reason it felt very important not to gross Jon out.

  
Silence fell, for a moment.

 

Then - 

 

”It’s alright to be sad, Sansa. Even if he is a dick, it’s alright to be sad about him”, he said, and it was such an un-Jon Snow thing to say that Sansa was completely taken aback. He was certainly not the sort to give emotional advice. She held her breath, waiting for more. But he didn’t say anything else.

 

It was she who broke the silence next.

 

”Thanks, Jon. I … I’m not sad about him, per se. It’s just been … you know. A lot. With everything. But it’s getting better now, really. It is better. I’m having a slight relapse, clearly” - she gestured around the closet ”- but … it’s better now.”

 

He nodded, but didn’t reply. It was nice, to sit with him like this in silence, and absurdly, Sansa was almost glad for the situation. Hiding in the closet from a dicky ex might not sound like fun, but hiding in the closet with Jon Snow … Sansa found she could live with that.

 

She was just about to tell him so herself, to thank him for staying with her, when they both froze. They could both hear it, outside the closet door.

 

Harry’s voice.

 

”Have you seen Sansa?” he said to someone. They heard every word. ”Someone said she went this way.”  
  
Jon, with ninja-like reflexes, dove for the light switch, sending them into an abyss of darkness as Sansa, not sure if she wanted to giggle or cry at the situation, crawled in behind a clothing rack. Jon was straight behind her, and he pulled down some coats from their hangers that they hung over themselves.

 

It was hardly dignified and very much unrational.

 

Outside, a female voice had answered Harry’s inquiry.

 

”This is a dead end, I think. Unless she’s in there? Is that the bathroom?”

 

Sansa’s heart was pounding in her chest.

 

”I’ll check.”

 

Steps outside. Sansa didn’t dare breathe. If Harry found them now, it would be, most likely, the most embarrassing scene in modern history. In the dark, she felt Jon’s hand grab hers. She squeezed his hand in panic. He squeezed back in reassurance.

 

Harry opened the door and turned on the light.

 

”Sans…?”

 

No reply, obviously.

 

He didn’t shut the door, though. Sansa couldn’t see him from under the coat, but it was easy to imagine him staring at the strange pile of jackets gathered behind the coat rack.

 

One, two, three.

  
Then Harry turned off the light and closed the door.

 

And Sansa began laughing.

 

She laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe; she doubled over in laughter, Jon jokingly hushing her; she laughed gasping for air; she laughed doubled over, and somehow pushed over the clothing rack, which made her laugh harder and harder. Jon was beside her, placing his hands on her shoulders as if just to know where she was in the dark.

 

And Sansa stopped laughing.

 

And kissed him. Or tried to, rather.

 

Her aim was a little off in the dark. But he didn’t seem to mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

NOW

 

She lays back on the coats, a fuzzy fabric is soft against her exposed skin. His hands roam her body hungrily, but slowly, oh so slowly, almost shyly, gentle against her. Her mind is a little foggy, it’s been a while since she’s done this, she is in the middle of the thought that he’s a good kisser when his lips leave hers in favor of her neck. Sensations; his hot breath against her skin, a shiver down her spine, the tickle of his stubble as he works his way downward, she lets out a little sound when his mouth finds her collarbone, then his lips return to hers and when she has to pull back a moment later to catch a shaky breath she can finish the thought.

 

He’s good at this.

 

 

* *

 

LATER

 

Later, after what will feel like just a moment but in reality will be closer to an hour, someone will open the door and find them there. That someone will begin to say ”okay weirdo, I’m he-” but they will cut themselves off and exclaim ” _Sansa?_ ” and Sansa will reply ” _Jeyne?”_ and they will stare at each other for a second before Jeyne will leave and shut the door. But it will be too late, of course - the secret will be out. By the end of the night, Jon and Sansa will have come out of the closet, albeit reluctantly; Harry will have left abruptly and early; Robb will have had serious talks with both Jon and Sansa.

 

But for now, they have other things keeping them preoccupied.


End file.
